John Robert Parker Ravenscroft, OBE (30 August 1939 – 25 October 2004)-RIP, known professionally as John Peel, was an English disc jockey, radio presenter, record producer and journalist. He was the longest-serving of the original BBC Radio 1 DJs, broadcasting regularly from 1967 until his death in 2004. He was known for his eclectic taste in music and his honest and warm broadcasting style.

Peel describes in an interview below about how his days at private school were disturbing with the bullying from older students,

"This just could not happen nowadays and the welfare of every individual in the school is paramount," he said. "Many public schools during the 1960s and 1970s underwent a complete transformation. The tradition in which senior boys were allowed too much power over junior boys has just disappeared."

Unlike today, he said in those days boys would have little contact with their parents and little contact with their housemaster at the school.

By consequence the more "muscular pupils" were allowed to gain an unhealthy "domination" over younger pupils, he added.

"Even low-level bullying would not be tolerated now, let alone the kind of behaviour John Peel is describing. Nevertheless it is a great sadness that this kind of behaviour ever went on and I feel greatly disturbed by what I have read."

Peel said that he was the victim of a system called "douling", derived from the Greek word for slave".

This obliged new boys to carry out tasks for older pupils, which often included masturbating them. Peel, whose real name was John Ravenscroft, said that one of his study monitors lured him to a toilet block at a nearby cemetery and ****d him.

"Oddly enough, much as I hated the experience, I think I had become so accustomed to systematic sexual abuse that I wasn't especially traumatised by the experience," he wrote.

"However, it was many years before I could bring myself to tell anyone what had happened to me."

Geoff Lucas, the general secretary of the Headmasters' and Headmistress' Conference, the leading association of independent schools, said that such behaviour would be "inconceivable" today.

"Certainly there have been some colourful events in the past that by the values of today would not be appropriate for the education of young people but they would be inconceivable today."

Peel's disclosure was welcomed by the NSPCC, which said that celebrities who came forward to talk about abuse played a vital role in encouraging other victims to seek help.